By Shaffie A Mtambo
Lilongwe Police has arrested Damiano Nkhoma,42 years old, for duping Magistrate K400 thousand on the pretext that he was a property agent who had secured him a house for rent in the Capital.
According to Lilongwe Police Public Relations Officer Inspector Hestings Chigalu,on July last year when the victim was transfer listed to work at Lilongwe Magistrate court, he contacted Nkhoma after coming across the suspect’s details on Facebook that he was a property agent based in the capital city.
A few days later, the suspect told the Magistrate that he was free to move his family to Lilongwe, lying that he [suspect] had secured a house for the victim’s accommodation in Area 49.
However, he asked the Magistrate to first send K250 thousand meant for rentals, K100 thousand as agent fee, and K50 thousand for other logistics.
Little did the Magistrate know that he was releasing rental fees to a phone contact of the suspect’s fellow trickster who posed as a landlord of the apartment Nkhoma claimed to have secured.
When the victim and his family arrived in Lilongwe with a loaded truck of household property, both the suspect’s, and the so called landlord’s phones could not be reached. The development rendered the victim helpless which forced the family to seek temporary shelter at their relations’ house in town.
Interestingly, when detectives asked the suspect if he knew in advance that the person he duped is a court Magistrate, he said he was well aware since they first introduced to each other.He hails from Mtenje Village, Traditional Authority Machinjiri in Blantyre District.
